Fireside Chat with Dungeon Master Matthew Mercer

Dungeons and Dragons world-building requires time, effort, patience, and studying. Wizards of the Coast makes it simple for dungeon masters to create their personal campaign setting. Adding non-player characters for players to interact can be a difficult task as well. Thankfully, nerdy-ass voice actor and dungeon master for the internet’s Critical Role, Matthew Mercer, took time to answer questions from Dungeons and Dragons fans to help breath more life into their campaigns.

Mercer is known for playing Leon S. Kennedy in Resident Evil, Chrom in Fire Emblem, and Overwatch’s favorite cowboy that proclaims the time; McCree. Plus several voices in World of Warcraft, the Pillars of Eternity series, and more. When not shouting at a microphone for a living he plans his long running Dungeons and Dragonscampaign, Critical Role, a weekly live-streamed Dungeons and Dragons game on Twitch.

The dungeon master live-streamed a chat with fans complete with a fireplace, a bottle of fine port, and a velvet ruby red robe, and answered questions about the campaign and how to better prepare as a dungeon master. He spoke about how players should listen to each other to make sure everyone is having a good time.

The ability to listen to their other players I think is a huge thing…but my favorite traits in players are the ones that listen and let each other player have the spotlight when it feels right…to help others experiences as opposed to shut them down.”

He believes it’s important as a player to take risks in the game.

As a DM a trait that I appreciate are players that aren’t always too careful. A player who gets bold every now and then is a memorable player and one that I really enjoy.”

He talked about creating weapons and NPCs. Give the weapon a backstory and an enchantment. Creating an NPC is similar; with their backstory add some flavor. Give them an accent, a class, background, occupation, and physical characteristic. With these attributes, he and the chat created a brand new NPC that will appear in Critical Role in the future. (Be on the lookout for a Tortle bard).

One large piece of advice he gave to viewers is to always have a list of names for characters your players will meet. You don’t want too many people named Phil running around the world.

The full chat can be seen above. Critical Rolestreams Thursdays on Twitch.

Scott’s been gaming since he could hold a controller in his hands. He’s a journalist who loves Dungeons and Dragons, video games, tabletop RPGs, and comic books. He has an intelligence of 6, he knows what he’s doing.